


the disorganized religion of my head

by bismuthBallistics



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Dark Comedy Elements, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 16:03:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18831976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bismuthBallistics/pseuds/bismuthBallistics
Summary: “You showed up to Ben’s funeral drunk?!”Yes, yes, he disgusts them, it’s disgusting. Klaus rolls his eyes and makes a little naggy-hand-puppet gesture. “So what? Why wouldn’t I?”(Or, why none of his siblings will listen to Klaus about Ben.)





	the disorganized religion of my head

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the Fall Out Boy song "West Coast Smoker".
> 
> I have written an astronomical amount for this fandom recently. More than I have in a very long time, mostly canon compliant one-shots. Hopefully I'll post them. But... yeah. This fic is a 2.7k response to maybe three lines of canon dialogue - aka, why do none of Klaus's siblings listen to him about Ben?
> 
> Content warnings: canon-typical substance abuse (off-screen), referenced or vague gore, canon-typical inappropriately timed humor, Klaus dealing with negative emotions really really poorly.

**KLAUS, AGE 17**

Sir Reginald says his final words, and then turns to Klaus. Like a chorus, his siblings follow suit.

It’s the crunching of their feet in the snow that catches Klaus’s attention, that even lets him know there’s been a change. He wasn’t listening. That’s probably disrespectful, or something. Oops.

“Well?” says his father.

“Well, what?” says Klaus airily, and Luther looks like he might hit him.

The frost on the windows has frozen in little spirals. Like arms.  _Like tentacles_ , Klaus thinks, and begins to giggle hysterically.

“Number Four.” Their father’s voice is clipped, and Klaus knows, he  _knows_ , this is a serious occasion and he should be very somber, and it’s tragic, it is—

But somehow, it’s funny, too.

“Oh, right,” says Klaus, trying to stop laughing and only partially succeeding. “Me. My job. Do I have a job? We’ve never done this before. And may we never do it again, etcetera, etcetera, but let’s be real, I’ll probably be the next one to go out anyway—”

There’s a knife at his throat. “Bring him back.”

“Bring who back?” Klaus can’t resist twisting the knife, pardon the pun, even as Diego’s hand shakes, even as the blade makes tiny scratches on his Adam’s apple.

Diego can’t seem to speak. His mouth opens and closes and he can’t even get a sound out. Even his stutter has failed him, Klaus thinks nonsensically, and he almost starts laughing again.

“Ohhhhh, you mean  _Ben_ ,” he says, because the way everyone’s been crying makes him want to reach inside them and  _twist_. “Yeah, I can’t. Sorry.”

“Yes, you can, Number Four. Now is the perfect time.” Well. Not everyone has been crying.

“Okay, for one, no I can’t, that’s not my thing, but even if I could bring a spirit back from the great spooky beyond, I couldn’t bring  _him_  back.”

“You’re so full of shit,” Allison whispers, her voice dark. “Are you  _drunk_?”

“No. Maybe. Yes. Look, that’s not the point.” Klaus isn’t sure he has a point. Somehow, impossibly, he may have lost the thread of this conversation. “My  _point_ , if you’ll allow me to make it—”

“You showed up to Ben’s funeral drunk?!”

Yes, yes, he disgusts them, it’s disgusting. Klaus rolls his eyes and makes a little naggy-hand-puppet gesture. “So what? Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because you’re you!” Luther explodes, striding towards him, and Klaus springs out of the way. Suck it, Number One, he took self-defense too.

Oh, right, Luther is talking. “— our  _brother_  and you’re the only one who can—”

“Chill out, Luther,” Klaus says, just to be terrible. “You should smoke with me some time, we’ll get that stick out of your ass.”

Luther, like Diego, falls silent, his hands clenching and unclenching like he wants to wring Klaus’s throat. Well, tough, Klaus isn’t into that. Okay, he is, but if he says that right now he probably actually will get punched.

“Aaaaaanyway,” Klaus continues. “As I was saying, can’t do it. I’m plastered right now, remember? And even if I could, I probably wouldn’t.”

“What.” Allison is so chatty today. Klaus supposes at least one sister ought to be, especially since Vanya really hasn’t been pulling her conversational weight since the accident. Oh, who is he kidding? She’s never pulled her weight.

“Can’t do it, won’t do it, not sure how to do it.” Klaus perches on the plinth of Ben’s newly erected statue and cocks one leg over the other. What a fetching picture the two of them must make together - one brother freshly dead and the other with hardly a life to lose.

If Ben were still here, Klaus could tell him that. Ben would have rolled his eyes and told him not to be dramatic. Well, too bad. If Ben wanted him to stop being dramatic, he shouldn’t have gotten himself ripped to shreds by bad hentai from another dimension.

There is absolute silence in the courtyard.

“Oh,” says Klaus, utterly unapologetic. “Did I say all that out loud?”

“You’re unbelievable.” Diego shakes his head, his eyes cold. But he’s not stuttering, so really, how upset can he be?

“Why not,” says Luther. It’s hardly a question. Their father is watching everything play out with a clinical, albeit faintly disdainful, expression.

“Why not what? You’ll have to be a little more specific,” Klaus sing-songs. He can feel something hot and hysterical bubbling up in his chest, something that balances on the thin edge between nausea and glee.

Luther growls, low in his throat, and Klaus grins. “You know what I’m talking about.”

“Ugh, fine. I wouldn’t bring him back because, one,” Klaus holds up a dramatic finger, “his corpse was super icky, and nobody wants that image haunting their nightmares, am I right?”

Everyone just looks down at him. Klaus clears his throat.

“Okay, well, point the second, what would we even say to him? Sorry we didn’t watch your back as it split in two when you turned yourself inside out by accident? Hope you enjoyed the rollercoaster?”

That’s really what makes him want to laugh. Of all the places, all the missions, where one of them could have died — saving a theme park from vengeful corporate rivals wouldn’t have been his prediction. The ride operator’s expression had been darkly hilarious, albeit a bit hard to make out under all the, you know,  _Ben_.

“Number Four.” Sir Reginald raises an eyebrow. “You were explaining your... inability?”

Oh, right. He was supposed to be talking or something. “Right! Yes. Thirdly, and finally. Even when I have been in a more, how shall we say,  _elevated_  state of mind... Ben has not seen fit to grace me with his presence.”

The wind whistles through the snowy courtyard.

He means it. Right now, right here, he counts five siblings, one parent, and— honestly, he’s not sure what Pogo and Grace count as. Not family, surely. But ghosts? No. There isn’t a spirit to be seen.

“Klaus.” Vanya’s voice is hoarse, nearly gone from sobbing. She wraps herself in her arms, burying herself deep in her heavy coat. “Please. This isn’t funny.”

She’s so... polite. Even now. Klaus’s face twists into a smile that becomes a smirk that becomes a sneer. Of all of them, she has the least cause to mourn. Seventeen years they’ve all lived together in this tomb of a house, and if he really put his mind to it he could probably count her conversations with Ben on one hand.

“Sorry, Number Seven. No can do. It’s not even up to me. Because _he’s not here._ ” And with that, he tips his head back to roar at the sky. “You hear that, Ben? You’re disappointing your family, you prick!”

“No.” God, how does that voice always manage to cut him to the core? Klaus has numbed himself for years, blocking out every horror he can, and yet… Dad can manage to freeze him in place with just a word. Sir Reginald curls his lip at his youngest remaining son. “No, Number Four, I believe you are the one disappointing us all right now.”

“Wow, ouch.” Klaus tries for bravado, and likes to think he approximates it. Dad is such a broken record. He looks to his siblings with a dramatic hairtoss – _seriously, this shit again?_ It’s nothing they haven’t heard before.

None of them will look at him.

Klaus swallows. The cold stone of the plinth is digging into his bony ass. The warmth in his chest floods away. God, he needs another hit of—something.

One by one, he tries to make eye contact with the others.

Dad, surprise surprise, looks like an angry statue. Nothing new there. Grace – god, suddenly he hates Grace – stands perfect and poised, a permanent half-smile painted on her face. Pogo just looks sad.

Okay, so the adults are a bust. Klaus turns to his siblings.

He barely glances at Allison before she scoffs and turns away. Her nails are black today, Klaus notices, his brain flitting from point to point. When had she painted them? Allison’s always been terrible at painting her own nails, always got him to do it. Did she ask him? The past week has been a blur, for a lot of reasons.

Luther glares, putting one hand on Allison’s shoulder. He’s taller than all of them, and broader, but right now he looks… diminished. Even that patented Number One’s Disappointed In You face is somehow less than it used to be.

Vanya, to no one’s surprise, is crying. Silently, this time. Her eyes are distant, but the tears streaming down her cheeks crystallize in the cold. Well, hey. If she’d wanted facial glitter to wear for the funeral, she could have just asked.

Diego meets Klaus’s gaze, his jaw set, and says nothing.

A little of the wind goes out of Klaus’s sails. He grasps for that manic energy before it can recede from him entirely, and doubles down. “Okay, you know what? Screw all of you guys!” He gets to his feet—

And brains himself on Ben’s statue.

* * *

Klaus wakes up in the infirmary to a figure standing over him. It’s too tall to be Pogo, and too goth to be Grace. Just a silhouette in a black hood, looming.

He presses himself up on his elbows.

The figure flickers, then reappears in the corner of the room.

“Hey, are you real?” Klaus asks. “Cause, and I’m going to be honest here, I mostly don’t remember the past week. Pretty sure I didn’t drop acid, but I can’t guarantee—”

The figure ripples. It’s a weird, undulating movement that starts in the stomach and spreads out, like the spirit is trying to escape its own form.

“That’s not an answer,” Klaus says. “Also, it’s rude to ignore people.”

The spirit ignores him.

God, his head hurts. He must be coming down off something rough. The last thing he remembers—oh, right, he hit his head. That would explain the hurting.

The funeral itself, though, is kind of ephemeral. He probably shouldn’t have showed up drunk off his ass, but hey, in life as in death, right? Ben would have understood.

They’d… hm. Erected the statue, said – something, Klaus hadn’t been paying attention – and then had a conversation about something else. At one point, there had been a knife… had that been real? He reaches for his throat and runs his fingers over his Adam’s apple. Tiny scratches.

Huh. Diego is so melodramatic.

There’s an icepack on the table next to him, along with a vase of flowers and a note in Grace’s perfect handwriting. Klaus grabs the icepack and pulls it to his head. He’ll read Grace’s motherly sentiments later.

“Hey.” Klaus is loath to actually ask a spirit to come over and talk to him, but he’s also bored out of his mind and there’s only one ghost.

No response.

“Hey, you. Come here!”

The spirit does not respond.

“Oh, my god, what is even the point of this power if I can’t tell you guys what to do? Either go away or come over here.”

The spirit stares out the window.

“Uuuugh. At least do a trick or something.”

The spirit explodes.

Its back splits open and intangible gore flies everywhere as something rips it apart from the inside out. Klaus sits bolt upright, scrambling back. He reaches the edge of the hospital bed and tips back, before tucking himself into a roll to brace the fall. His breath catches in his chest.

As he peers up over the bed, trying to get another look, Klaus’s heart and head both pound. Sometimes ghosts replay a moment, something violent or horrible or important, trying to get his attention, trying to make him fix them. He can’t fix them. He can’t fix anything.

But this is something special, something worse. The illusory viscera winks out of existence and recomposes itself into the hooded figure.

Hoodie-ed figure. One particular hoodie.

“Ben?” Klaus whispers.

Ben turns without moving. One moment, he’s looking out the window, and the next he’s facing Klaus. God, why do spirits have to be so dramatic all the time?

Klaus can hardly see Ben’s face from under the low hood. “It’s me. Calm down. No more exploding.”

Ben ripples again. Klaus jumps to his feet.

“No, no, no no no no no. No more of that.” He approaches Ben slowly. Then—okay, he hurries. No shame in that. “What took you so long?”

No response.

Klaus can feel something hot drop into his core. For the past week, he’s been itching for someone to take a swing at him, and as far as he can remember, no one’s taken the bait. But Ben’s never disappointed him.

“You stubborn bastard,” he breathes, electricity running through his bones. “You took your sweet time just to screw with me, didn’t you? Just to be a prick. Fine. Fine! Don’t talk, not like that’s anything new.”

Ben stares at him, dead-eyed.

“Not that you ever had anything worthwhile to say, apparently, since you never fucking said it, spent all of your time with your nose in your books and now you’re back! Ha!” It doesn’t have to be true, it just has to get a reaction. But it doesn’t, and so Klaus tries again. “Bet you can’t read now. How does that feel, an eternity of life after death and now you’ll _have_ to listen to me, you selfish, cold-hearted, _dead bastard—”_

A knock sounds on the door.

“Come in!” Klaus trills. Maybe he can talk to a family member who’ll respond.

It’s Luther, stiff and uncomfortable. That’s fine. Ben will see that Klaus doesn’t need him. He has other brothers, more appreciative of his attempts to communicate. “Yes?”

“Mom wanted me to check if you were up,” Luther says, shifting from foot to foot. He won’t make eye contact. Weirdo.

“Well, as you can plainly see, I have arisen.” Klaus takes a sweeping bow, mostly for the hell of it, then trips and catches himself on the table. Right. Still a little wobbly.

“Right.” Luther looks away, turning to go.

“Hey!” Klaus stumbles towards him. “Hey, Luther. Not for nothing, but why are _you_ doing this?”

Towering above Klaus, Luther stares down at him. “Doing… what?”

“Coming to get me! Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know—” Klaus wiggles his fingers expressively. “Monitoring satellites, or something? For bad guys? Isn’t Diego Mommy’s little angel?”

Luther opens his mouth. Then he closes it again.

In the corner, Ben says nothing, and on impulse, Klaus flips him off.

“Diego…” Luther says finally, “isn’t here.”

“Well, where is he?” _Diego’s being moody again, what a surprise_ , Klaus mouths at Ben, who doesn’t respond.

“We don’t know, Klaus!” Luther snaps. Klaus does a double take. “We don’t know where he is. He left.”

“He left, like—”

“He cursed Dad out and said he wasn’t coming back.” Luther hunches in on himself. “No one knows where he went.”

Surely there are some words here to be said. Klaus’s tongue can always rise to the occasion. It’s one of his greatest virtues.

And yet, the infirmary is silent.

Three brothers with nothing to say.

And technically, only two of them are even here.

Luther swallows. “Anyway. We’re having lunch. Mom said to invite you if you were awake.”

“Oh, yeah.” Klaus can feel his face crease into an easy smile. “Yeah, I’ll be right down, just, you know, give me a minute to freshen up.” _To smoke up._

“To…?”

Klaus waves him off. “Don’t worry about it, big guy.”

“Right,” says Luther, looking faintly concerned. “Well… all right.” He turns away, and then a thought occurs to him. “Hey. Klaus. Who were you talking to?”

Klaus blinks. “Huh?”

“Just now. Before I came in.”

“Oh! Oh, yeah.” Klaus flaps a hand at his brother. “Ben’s just being a prick, that’s all. Ghosts can be so _bitchy_ sometimes, you know?”

Luther stares at Klaus. His jaw works for a second.

Then he slams the door so hard it cracks.

“Huh,” Klaus muses. “Wonder what his problem is.” Ben flickers, and Klaus raises a finger. “Don’t you even start.”


End file.
